CBD appreciates the refreshing candour Kim Williams has brought to his role as ABC chair.
And so, when opining on a decades-long tiff with former Radio National Late Night Live host Phillip Adams, one of Aunty’s most beloved veterans, Williams was typically frank.
ABC chair Kim Williams says he is puzzled by Phillip Adams’ animosity towards him.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
“I don’t have a fight with Phillip Adams; he has one with me,” Williams told former 3AW broadcaster Neil Mitchell on a new episode of the podcast Neil Mitchell Asks Why?
“I haven’t spoken to Phillip Adams in 35 years, but he clearly harbours a deep animus towards me.
Long-running tiff: Kim Williams and Phillip Adams.Credit: John Shakespeare
“I have written to him a couple of times about matters that are known between him and me and which I have never publicised, where he has uttered things that are seriously untruthful, and I have corrected him and asked him to cease doing that, and he has obviously reacted rather badly to that.”
Williams said he was puzzled by Adams’ animosity.
“The extremity of Phillip’s views about me [is] something that does puzzle me because we literally haven’t spoken in decades, and I’ve written him two or three letters about matters that were untruthful and incorrect, and that clearly has offended him deeply, and I couldn’t care less that he’s offended.
“I stopped listening to Phillip a long time ago.
Phillip Adams.Credit: ABC
“I think he once said that … Australian television had made one year of television and then repeated it 30 or 40 times. When I did listen to his program, [I] often had that feeling about his own radio program.”
There is clearly no love lost between the pair. In fact, after Williams came to the ABC in January, Adams announced the next month that he’d be leaving Late Night Live.
Not to be outdone, when Williams got the top job, Adams told The Guardian that he wasn’t “a great fan of Kim Williams”.
“Kim and I have a lot of history. I’m not happy that he got the big job,” Adams said.
Apart from a few choice words for Adams in the podcast with Mitchell, Williams also took the opportunity to lay out a vision for Aunty: warning against ads on the ABC, opposing privatisation, suggesting the broadcaster has a role to restore social cohesion, outlining the need for more money and insisting the ABC’s journalism doesn’t skew left. In his own words: “I’m an old-fashioned weirdo.”
ABSOLUTELY AWAITING
In the world of Australian pop princesses, Vanessa Amorosi might count only as minor royalty when ranked alongside the likes of Kylie Minogue, Olivia Newton-John, Delta Goodrem and the woman equally beloved of former PM Scott Morrison and the French, Tina Arena.
But she has had her moments in the spotlight – first, as a 19-year-old singing her hit single Absolutely Everybody at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and more recently as the star of a legal stoush in Victoria’s Supreme Court last year.
At issue there was the ownership of a house in Narre Warren, bought with the proceeds of that first flush of fame in 2001 by a company registered a couple of years earlier in the names of a 17-year-old Amorosi and her mother, Joyleen Robinson. The property was put in Robinson’s name, but Amorosi claims that was only ever intended as a move to protect her from potential creditors.
It was an ugly dispute that led to mother and daughter shedding tears in the witness box, former singer, barrister and Australian Idol judge Mark Holden lending moral support to Amorosi, and Justice Steven Moore – who this masthead noted bears a striking resemblance to Guy Pearce – ticking off Robinson’s legal team for sloppy preparation and last-minute attempts to change the basis of their case.
Vanessa Amorosi leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria in October.Credit: AAP
It had it all. Well, almost. The only thing missing – still, nine months later – is a decision.
There are complexities to the case, one person close to the proceedings has observed. But, says another, it’s not exactly the Constitution that’s at issue here.
Ultimately, it may well be a numbers game – a question of who gets what and in what percentage. And on that score, we defer to more pop royalty, Depeche Mode, for guidance: everything counts in large amounts.
BOSS WANTED
Job alert! Teal independent Zoe Daniel needs a new chief of staff. But what’s the deal with her old one, former ABC journalist and sports presenter Angela Pippos?
Pippos is staying with Team Zoe but moving across to a new gig as chief political adviser. Hence the need for a new chief of staff, who will be based in Daniel’s bayside Melbourne seat of Goldstein and not Canberra.
Daniel is also in need of a media adviser and content creator “responsible for developing, implementing, and managing the media strategy and content creation”. Applications via ethicaljobs.com.au (natch) if you are game for a media job earning up to $89,999 per annum, which seems a little light on to us.
Meanwhile, Daniel’s opponent in a rematch from the 2022 federal election, former Liberal MP Tim Wilson, was spotted by a CBD agent on a flight from Rome to Melbourne recently, mixing up economy and business seats. The spotter recounted: “He came on board bopping away to music, wearing a pair of GAZMAN(!) shorts and one shoelace undone.”
SPOTTED
Alan Joyce, the former Qantas boss who made an emergency landing from the cockpit of the national carrier last year, was spotted in London for the Airline Strategy Awards over the weekend.
No surprises that Joyce didn’t win anything given the various customer service and industrial relations Hindenburgs that marked the end of his reign. Neither did the bloke who shared a selfie with Joyce on LinkedIn – Manish Raniga, a former director of “bogan” airline Bonza, which crashed this year shortly after departure.
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